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Z Energy says sustained investment in developing and maintaining great leaders is the key to its winning a 2014 Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders Award.

The Aon Hewitt award examines links between leadership practices and financial results across organisations in the Australasian region.

Z Chief Executive, Mike Bennetts said leadership is one of the fundamentals of how Z operates and the company are deeply proud of winning an award that sets it apart as an employer.

“Winning the Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders Award truly reflects the sustained investment we have put into leadership since the beginning of Z,” said Mike.

“Right from day one, we were clear that leadership was an area where we would be world class and differentiate ourselves against the competition.

Z’s focus on leadership is underpinned by two key philosophies:

That extraordinary leadership equals extraordinary results, and that

you don’t have to be a people leader to demonstrate leadership.

Within Z, both philosophies are lived out through sustained investment in leadership development across all areas of the business, including Z’s 2.500 retail site staff.

In 2013, Z offered its 22 retail site operators the opportunity to go through a 12 day leadership programme, the same programme that Z senior leaders and people leaders also attend.

“Stretching our leadership programme beyond our senior leaders at head office, was fundamental in ensuring all of our people were on the same leadership development journey.

“Through investment in our retail teams we’ve set them up to deliver a world class customer service experience for our customers, and as a result we’ve seen a 22% increase in customer service metrics ahead of our competitors.”

Z’s success in this space hasn’t come solely from training. Rather, it has been an expectation that its people always behave in a way that’s consistent with its leadership framework. The framework links directly to business outcomes, including financial performance measures and customer service metrics.

“At the time of induction, we’re very clear with our people about what we expect. This means that all our people are expected to ‘walk the talk’ through bringing to life the leadership tools we provide,” said Mike.

“We’re very pleased to have been recognised for the way in which we embed leadership within our organisation, however we realise there’s always room to improve and we’re committed to achieving more in this space.”

One of Z’s meatiest sustainability goals (we love a good pun!) is to reduce the waste going to landfill from our service stations by 70% by 2015.

In getting after this goal, the first thing we did was implement recycling across the Z service station network. We now have recycling across all of our own operations, as well as public recycling bins on 103 of our forecourts.

A baseline survey in 2012 showed that up to a third of the contents in our skip bins, by weight, was food waste.

A food waste pick-up service is a fairly new and evolving service, and generally only available in more urban centres, and our neighbourhood sites with friendly local pig farmers are happy to keep donating their unsold food (apart from the bacon and egg pies!) to them. But what to do with the unsold pies and sandwiches, and coffee grounds we were throwing away every year?

Steve Rickerby chucked in his job at an insurance company in 2008, and set up We Compost; a network of businesses in Auckland keen to send their food waste to a credible composting facility. Steve started out with one bin on the back of a ute, and now collects more than 500 bins (9 tonnes) of organic waste a week, and delivers it to the EnviroFert facility in Tuakau, where it is turned into organic compost products that are sold to horticultural growers and pastoral farmers to improve the quality and condition of their crops. So far, this year alone, we estimate Z sites have diverted 342 tonnes of food waste from landfill, partly with We Compost’s help.

Z started having our food waste picked up by Steve at 21 retail sites in Auckland and Hamilton, before he decided to consolidate to the Auckland region, where business is booming.

“Partnering with Z gave us a huge boost at a time when we really needed it,” says Steve. “The Z sites increased our collection density in certain areas and helped us justify a push out west. To be able to casually drop into conversation with prospective customers that we collect from around 20 Z sites gives us a huge amount of credibility and has helped to normalise the idea of a 'third' bin. I like to think that the sort of people who go to the cafes we collect from are the sort of people who buy their fuel from Z. So, it is also an important aspect to our positioning in the market and I hope working with us does the same for the Z brand!”

Thanks in large part to a successful partnership with the likes of We Compost, and Kai to Compost in Wellington, we’re now tracking at nearly 85% of the way towards our waste reduction target; and this despite the network growing from 204 stations in 2012 to 213 stations today.

New Zealand’s next big retail collectable craze strikes at more than 200 Z service stations today.

Z is bringing the stackable collectables Blokhedz to NZ for the first time, with 16 DC Comics Super Hero and Super-Villain characters to collect, stack, trade and take into battle.

“Blokhedz can be stacked and played with any number of ways. We hope Kiwis will love the challenge of collecting and trading them, stacking them, and taking on family and friends in Super Hero inspired games,” Z General Manager Retail, Mark Forsyth says.

“We reckon they’ll be flying out of Z stations faster than Superman himself.”

“At Z we pride ourselves on being fun-loving, and we think our customers do too – it’s the Kiwi way. We reckon our customers will love the DC Comics Blokhedz range, and will have heaps of fun with them,” Mark says.

“Half of the fun comes from collecting and trading the characters to try and get the full set – and the fastest way to do this is to join forces with family and friends. The other half is taking on family and friends in Blokhedz games and challenges – like building the biggest or craziest stack.

“The Blokhedz DC ComicsSuper Heroes and Super-Villains will appeal to Kiwis across generations – everyone has their favourite,” Mark says.

Z is giving away Blokhedz with every $40 spent (excluding tobacco products) while stock lasts. Head to z.co.nz/blokhedz to find out more about the Blokhedz characters, games you can play and competitions you can enter.

Xero and Z Energy have today announced that Z Card customers can now sign up to have a copy of their invoice data transferred automatically to Xero, saving thousands of small businesses time manually entering transactions.

Without having to manually enter data, a Z Card bill will show up in Xero ready to be coded and approved. Z is New Zealand’s first fuel retailer to be providing this service to its customers.

Xero’s NZ Managing Director Victoria Crone said having an innovative kiwi company like Z integrating invoicing seamlessly into the Xero global financial platform for small business was a huge milestone.

“Xero and Z have a lot of synergies. We were both founded in New Zealand and we both recognise the importance of small businesses and love finding ways to make it easier for them to be productive,” Crone said.

“Xero is connecting big business to small business and through our open API we are creating new opportunities and saving kiwi small businesses their most valuable asset time.

“There is great potential for businesses, like Z, to interact with our more than 100,000 New Zealand customers,” Crone said.

Z Energy’s Commercial General Manager Lindis Jones said working with Xero is just another way Z is looking to make its customers’ lives easier.

“We know that time is really important to our customers and through partnering with Xero we can help them spend more time focussing on the things that really matter.

“We think customers will appreciate saving time on doing administration each month, and the Z Card invoice feed into Xero won’t cost a cent,” Lindis said.

Z Energy’s waste reduction journey turns another corner this week, with an initiative that will have customers’ gardens blooming.

Z is rolling out help-yourself stands for coffee grounds from its convenience stores on its service station forecourts. Coffee grounds can be collected in compostable bags from the new stands at 33 Z sites around New Zealand.

“The grounds from our coffee machines currently go to compost, along with our other unsold food waste, but some of our customers have been asking if they could have the coffee grounds to put on their gardens,” says Z Sustainability Manager Gerri Ward.

“About 40% of all of householders’ waste is composed of food waste in New Zealand, so this is another way of highlighting alternative uses for food waste than sending it to landfill, where it emits harmful greenhouses gases.

“New Zealanders are pretty good at recycling plastics, paper and glass, but we tend to think less about food waste,” says Gerri.

Giving away coffee grounds and composting food waste is one small but important part of Z’s waste reduction journey. Z set a target in 2012 of reducing waste to landfill from its petrol stations by 70% by the end of 2015.

“Two years later we’re more than three quarters of the way there. While the network has grown from 204 Z stations in 2012 to 213 stations today, our waste to landfill is about a third of what it was, thanks to the brilliant efforts by retailers and site staff,” Gerri says.

“Back in 2012, about half our petrol stations did any form of recycling. Today it’s a different story. Nearly all our stations now recycle cardboard and half recycle plastic, cans and glass.

“About half of our sites also have food waste collection. So far this year we’ve diverted about 226 tonnes of food waste from landfill. Mostly this goes into compost or pig food. Giving away coffee grounds to local gardeners will help us reduce our food waste even further.”

Z is also looking to reduce waste before it comes onto its stations. “An example of how we are doing that is by working with our magazine supplier to tailor the magazines delivered to each station to reduce the wastage,” Gerri says.

“We’ve made great progress towards achieving our goal of a 70% reduction in waste to landfill from our stations by 2015. We’re still working hard to improve and continuing to make good progress thanks to our station staff and members of the public using recycling bins at our stations, and new initiatives like our coffee grounds stands.”

One of Christchurch’s oldest remaining central city service stations, Z Moorhouse, reopens this week as one of the country’s most modern.

Despite surviving the Christchurch Earthquakes, Z Moorhouse has now been completely knocked down and rebuilt in a $3.4 million redevelopment.

Z Energy says Z Moorhouse is the company’s first service station redevelopment in the South Island in more than 10 years.

The new site will have an enhanced food and beverage offering, with Z Espress coffee and locally made pies, and will operate 24 hours – creating six new jobs.

The redevelopment has also included building a new Z2O car wash, redesigning the forecourt, rebuilding the convenience store and replacing all underground fuel tanks.

Z General Manager Retail Mark Forsyth said Z Moorhouse has been redeveloped with speed and sustainability in mind.

“We’ve designed it to be one of the most modern and speedy service stations anywhere in the country: with eight lanes, a bigger forecourt, all three grades of fuel on all pumps, stretchy hoses that mean you can fill from either side, a hi-flow diesel pump for larger diesel vehicles and optional pay-at-pump.

“It’s also designed to operate sustainably, with recycling of water in the car wash and energy efficient LED lighting.”

Z has also installed the latest technology high definition, multi-camera CCTV system to keep staff and customers as safe as possible.

Z Moorhouse is the first ‘knockdown-rebuild’ by Z, or predecessor Shell, in the South Island in more than 10 years. (The last South Island development by Shell was Z Mosgiel in 2003.)

Since acquiring Shell’s New Zealand distribution and sales operations four years ago, Z has committed to a national network investment programme. Its next South Island knockdown-rebuild is scheduled to begin at Woolston in October. Z is also exploring new developments and redevelopments for several other Canterbury and South Island locations including Christchurch, Darfield, Dunedin, Queenstown, and Blenheim.

Z Energy’s new Mt Eden office is giving away $4000 to four local community groups to celebrate its opening, and it’s up to Mt Eden residents to help decide how the money is split.

On 18 August Z Energy moved into its brand new Mt Eden office, the ‘Z Loft’, where more than 30 staff members formerly located at two separate Auckland offices, are now able to base themselves at a single location.

The one thing that remained at the heart of the move was doing ‘Good in the Hood’.

As part of Z’s Good in the Hood programme, the Z Loft is giving away a share of $4000 to four Mt Eden charities: CanTeen Grafton, Salvation Army, Home & Family Counseling, and Mercy Hospice. The way the money is split will be decided by the local community – the public can cast their vote at the Z Loft’s local Mt Eden café, Cool Food (20 Normanby Road), until 18 September.

“This is something we’re really excited about and encourage our Mt Eden community to come in and visit us and cast their votes. The staff at Cool Café have been so fantastic and we reckon this is a great way to give back to our community in Mt Eden,” says Z’s Philippa Reid, who helped manage the opening of the new Auckland office.

To top this all off, most of the old Z Energy offices’ pre-loved furniture was donated to the local Glenfield Rugby Union & Sports Club and local community group Te Tai-Awa o te Ora; both were ecstatic at their newly acquired furniture.

Good in the Hood is a nation-wide programme through which Z gives away more than $1.2m a year to hundreds of neighbourhood groups.

Z is embarking on our first GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Sustainability Report this year, which will be integrated into our Annual Report.

In order to complete this report, we have created a shortlist of relevant topics that should be assessed for inclusion in the sustainability report, in accordance with the GRI guidelines.

Check out the table below where we’ve chosen 13 Aspects and 22 Indicators to report against in our first year, covering Economic, Environmental, and Social indicators.

The first step in a robust reporting framework is to check in with key stakeholders that the Aspects we’ve chosen to report against are what you’d expect to see from Z, and whether there’s anything conspicuously absent from this list. So, please flick us an email with your thoughts to: yourviews@z.co.nz